A Note on the Roman Numerals. 
163 
1907-8.] 
These introductory remarks may serve to remind us that our subject 
is complex, and that explanations or hypotheses may be sought in many 
directions and in different epochs. The purpose of this paper is, however, 
a strictly limited one : not a survey of that vast river of language, or of 
any one of its main tributaries, but merely a question regarding the pro- 
bable explanation of the seven little signs called the Roman numerals, 
which have floated down to us on the great current. What do they 
signify ? Whence did they come ? What do scholars tell us regarding the 
origin of their forms ? 
The difficulty of the problem will be made evident by the following 
considerations: — (1) the remoteness of the period at which the symbols 
began to be employed; (2) the silence of the ancients regarding the origin 
or source of the signs — for nations, like individuals, do not chronicle their 
early beginnings ; (3) the frequent modification of some of the forms, due 
to (a) the particular instruments or materials that were used for recording 
them, or to (6) their gradual approximation towards, or divergence from, 
other cognate signs, or to (c) the natural tendency towards the abbrevia- 
tion of all signs and the avoidance of unnecessary labour in using them ; 
(4) the survival and contemporaneous employment of divergent forms of 
the same symbol, so that among the various forms the original sign can 
hardly be ascertained with certainty. 
To prepare us for the modification and variation of the forms which 
represented the Roman numerals, Nos. 3 and 4 of the above considerations 
may be briefly illustrated by some popular instances of alphabetic or other 
signs that have undergone modification or evolution. Thus we have 
ET C? pf (J ^ h (Taylor, The Alphabet , i. 8), the well- 
known ampersand and the algebraical sign plus ; the comma (,), which is 
the attenuated remnant of the original hair-line (/) that was used to mark 
a pause ; the i and the j, which, like u and v, were originally one letter ; the i, 
which acquired the accent or dot as a mark of distinction from u, m, and n — 
for example, trt ; the long s (f), which has dropped out of use, except in the 
and the Fraktur {j, because it was inconveniently like f ; the z 
in the abbreviation viz. ( videlicet ), which was originally only the sign of 
contraction, the semi-colon (;), written rapidly without lifting the pen, so 
that “ vi; ” became “ vi^,” and, having acquired a second mark of contrac- 
tion, is now printed as “ viz.” 
ligatures^c 
